


bring your battle to my door

by kay_cricketed



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: AU ending, First Time, M/M, Throne Sex, bilbo defeats thorin with the power of sass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-23
Updated: 2013-01-23
Packaged: 2017-11-26 13:38:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/651071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_cricketed/pseuds/kay_cricketed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Surviving the Battle of Five Armies is only the first step. Bilbo may not be able to master the sword, but he is certainly capable of putting Thorin Oakenshield in his place, and his place is the throne of Erebor. (This is a very nice way of saying: Thorin and Bilbo celebrate by having sex on the throne and the mountain says it's good.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	bring your battle to my door

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Hobbit Kink Meme and this prompt: Erebor is won, everyone survived, and it's time for some hot, adrenaline-pumped victory sex on the throne. They're still sweaty and dirty and bloody.
> 
> Obviously the end is AU, and the sex ended up being more angry and tender than ordinary victory sex, but I tried! Also, I have shamefully taken a few of the lines from the book and remixed them in the story (namely, the "good morning" lines and Bilbo's riddle for the dragon). This is done only in love and respect, because Tolkien owns at least three quarters of my mealy soul.

It is Dwalin who finds him wandering in confusion through the camp of Lakemen and elves, black blood caked in his curls and mud still wet up to his knees. But no dirt can hide the gleam of mithril, and when Dwalin catches its shine, he finds the last of their company living and breathing and eyes dark as the mountain’s swallow of shadow.

“Thorin,” says Bilbo, even as Dwalin seizes his chin and turns his head from side to side, examining the wound. It will leave a scar, thin and pale like split thread. “He isn’t dead?”

“He lives,” Dwalin says. “He asks for you.”

Bilbo’s breath draws in sharply. He pulls away and Dwalin lets him—the last time Bilbo had laid foot upon the Lonely Mountain, its king threatened to toss him from the walls of Erebor for his treachery—but the weakening sun prepares to rest behind the hills, a king burning with conquest in his throne room awaits, and Dwalin is most ready to put food in his belly and a blanket beneath his cheek. War is tiring, if agreeable, work. Tonight he will sleep knowing their home is reclaimed and the gold safe in its fortifications.

But first, he will give his king a last adversary and leave them to battle. For this, Dwalin knows, is how new kingdoms are born: blood drawn in odium, sealed in love, made into song. They all wait for the song to shake their bones and lock the mountain in its name. They wait for the halfling.

Perhaps the wizard had known all along. If their journey has been twisted out of his workings, Dwalin doesn’t care to know.

“Come, laddie,” he says, drawing Bilbo away from the camp. “You don’t belong here.”

“Yes, he’s made it quite apparent where I don’t _belong_ ,” Bilbo says waspishly. “I do wish he’d stop changing his mind.”

Dwalin watches the fierce, wild thing lashing under the dark in Bilbo’s eyes and almost wishes he could remain in the throne room to see it unleashed from its homely body. He guides Bilbo through the towering halls of awakened Erebor, deep into the fold of the mountainside, this otherworldly creature—this thief in the night. When Dwalin locks him in with the most precious of their possessions, he bids him all the luck in the world.

 

The heavy doors of the throne room close behind Bilbo with a resounding clang that echoes down into the abyss surrounding him. A long walkway leads him across the gaping hole in the world. At its end is the throne, imposing and cold, and in it, a king equally so. Thorin stands at the first sound of footfalls and paces like a trapped wildling, loping and powerful, hand clenched around his sword’s hilt and the battle still in him, writhing. He watches Bilbo with the intensity that is his birthright. He means to forgive Bilbo. He means to confess his own sickness. This, Bilbo knows.

Oh, but how _savage_ it makes him feel. The relief at seeing Thorin Oakenshield alive—his chest bare save for soiled bandages wrapped around it, streaked in sweat and grime—is a bite that reaches marrow. Having reclaimed the Arkenstone and laid the bodies of goblins and orcs to waste before his walls, this is no longer the dwarf prince who had ridden the long, bitter journey to the Lonely Mountain to reclaim his homeland. This is not the Thorin with whom Bilbo shared bread, nor the Thorin who grew into his wonder-struck, toothy smiles. This is the King Under the Mountain, triumphant against all enemies, willing to throw Bilbo to them for the mistake of wanting peace. There is wargs’ blood matted in his hair. He is awful. He is _awful_.

And Bilbo hungers for him in the way dwarves must for gold.

His steps quicken. He clutches fistfuls of the mithril shirt, trembling in something stronger than fear. Yes—yes, a poor stupid hobbit he may be, short and thick around the middle and homesick—for his books, the drag of good pipe-weed over his tongue, the bed that housed his dreams when they were too large to be contained in him—but Bilbo has been much changed. He has put steel to skin, braved the long river. He is clue-finder, web-cutter, the stinging fly who freed his company from treacherous spiders. He rides the Eagles and carries the ring of invisibility. He is Luckwearer. He is Barrel-rider. 

And _this_ , the stubborn arrogant madman before him, is his king, has ever been his king, worth a thousand deaths harking at his doorstep. It is rather unfortunate, the whole lot of it.

“I would ask you, Master Baggins—“

“No,” he says.

Thorin cocks his head. “I’ve said nothing.”

“I don’t care,” says Bilbo. “You’ve nothing to say I want to hear. If it is an apology, you must save it for when you look less fierce. If you meant to expel me from the mountainside, you ought to have left me to spin in circles on the field, all my wits dashed. You’ve said _quite enough_ , thank you, and good evening.”

“Good evening?” Thorin recoils, and thunder comes black across his face, his eyes over-bright like jewels in the deep. “That’s all you would say to me?”

“Yes,” Bilbo snaps. “Good evening. As in, I wish you one and it will be good whether you want it or not, because it is an evening to be good on when you’ve not been gobbled up by goblins! All of that at once!”

He is angry, and he can still see the battle in his mind’s eye—the glint of sun on metal filling the meadow akin to so many stars, a fireworks cart gone up in smoke too early in the festival, a great harrowing cry—

“ _I was wrong_ ,” says Thorin. He says this in the same way he has spoken of his homeland: heart-bound, in longing, in the same greed that draws all dwarves to treasure and coin. “Would those words quench some of the fire that you carry to greet me?”

( _I have never been so wrong in all my life,_ he had said, as if he’d only ever been waiting to be proven so, as if there were magic returned to the limestone and coal seams of the Middle-earth mines. In the warm press of his furs, Bilbo had wanted to believe, too. He wanted to be all of those things Gandalf had promised to Thorin Oakenshield and more.)

Bilbo looks at him. “It doesn’t matter now,” he says. “You’ve won the battle. You get to keep your share of the gold and the Arkenstone. You’ve not broken your contract with me, not really.”

“I have.”

“No, not really,” he repeats, firmer.

Thorin sets his jaw. Then he is close—too close, there are crumbles of dirt and slate in his beard—and he breathes Bilbo’s air, puts phantom hands inside of him and twists everything up, pins him with nothing more than his shadow-twin. “I have won against the armies of the dark forces,” he grates, each word precise, twice as heavy as the one before it. “The line of Durin remains unbroken. But I will find no rest, no respite, until you’ve seen my true character.”

“Your true character,” Bilbo repeats, and he wishes he’d spent more time learning to lie from the more silver-tongued Tooks. He is terrified that his every whisper of air is an open letter given life. Nevertheless he finds courage enough to reach up, cupping the side of Thorin’s face—the coarseness of the beard and the intimacy of touching it make him falter. “Thorin,” he says haltingly, “I _know_ your character.”

Thorin looks at him as if he can determine the sincerity of the claim for himself.

“I know you,” says Bilbo in a rush of damp heat and regret, and then he is surging up to crush his mouth to Thorin’s and his fingers sink into the thick of his beard and the battle is not on the fields, but here between them, piercing and woken to flame. He can feel Thorin startle and then, an arm hooks around the small of his back and pulls him in until they are mashed together, as thick as thieves, and Bilbo can feel every fingerprint Thorin leaves in his body. He yanks on the beard and bites down hard, hoping to leave something permanent.

Thorin fists some of his dirtied curls, holding fast even though Bilbo doesn’t want to go anywhere else. He pries Bilbo’s mouth open with his own and breathes inside of him, tastes of copper, tastes of blood. When he laughs into their kiss, it’s with an acute joy—and the dragon-hide armor Bilbo has tried to wrap his heart in is punctured by its obvious promise. 

Thorin laughs again, pressing careless kisses onto his chin, the corner of his mouth, the bridge of his nose. “You continue to surprise us all,” he says.

How can he not allow himself to fill with that same elation? Bilbo kisses him again, because he must.

“You are rude,” he says, ragged and ill-composed. “But I suppose you’ve just won a great victory.”

“I have,” says Thorin. He splays his fingers over Bilbo’s stomach, and if Bilbo had cared anything for his lovely mithril before, he certainly doesn’t now. Let it be bloodstained and garish. “Two great victories. One just as important as the other.”

Bilbo closes his eyes. He rests his forehead on Thorin’s shoulder and can feel the strong workings of his body beneath, the blood where it ought to be, the drag and release of breath. He thinks those are fine words to say, even if they cannot possibly be true. Perhaps he can cadge a few of his own. “It’s unfortunate,” he admits to him. “Tooks are mad adventurers. But we Bagginses, I’m afraid we have the tendency to fall in love with mad adventurers.”

“Are you still angry with me?”

“Oh confound you,” says Bilbo. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.” And he kisses him again, grasping Thorin’s arm and all of its minute granules, its sweat and grit and the imprint of chainmail. 

It is just as well. If Bilbo is half the burglar Gandalf bade him to be, if he possesses a thimbleful of the courage sung in songs, let him seize the hoard and leave nothing behind. He asks Thorin to take the mithril shirt off of him—to take it back for an hour, and to sit on his throne.

 

It is with reverence that Thorin touches him, the gleam of mithril as cloying at the Arkenstone. He cannot take his eyes away. Some part of Thorin is certain this is nothing but a dream, because even if he had hoped to reclaim Erebor and his crown, to have all of this seems suspicious. Perhaps he is dead. _Let it be_ , Thorin thinks, watching his hands pry away the easily crumpled mithril, its armor like a fall of water, and beneath it Bilbo’s dress shirt is filthy.

He lets the mithril fall to the ground. He moves to pull the dress shirt over Bilbo’s head, but Bilbo lays a flat hand against his collarbone.

“The throne,” he says. “Since you wanted it so badly.”

Thorin drags his gaze up to meet its equal. “It ought not to be—like this,” he says. “Here. Before—words. It is customary to—”

Bilbo kisses him again and the momentum is so unexpected that Thorin gives ground, a few steps staggered. It should stop there—he could make it stop there—but Bilbo is still pushing him onward, clever hands at once mapping his outline, fixing themselves in his sword belt. The throne is behind him. He can feel his thighs meet its seat. He lets himself sit, hard.

“I don’t care,” Bilbo says, climbing into his lap. In the silence around them, his breathing is rough and scattered. “If I wanted a nice, comfortable, warm bed with pillows and quilts and a roaring fire, I obviously would have stayed right where I was in Bag-End, restocking my pantry. I’ll still have my bed, thank you, but not now. I thought I’d find you dead.”

“Not dead,” he says, not altogether assured. It doesn’t sound like his voice: graveled, wrecked. “The battle is won.”

“Yes.”

“Will you stay?”

Bilbo digs his fingers into Thorin’s hair, sweeping it back from his face. He doesn’t answer him. His kisses are open-mouthed, hungry and clumsy. Thorin wraps his arms around his hips and holds him down against his thighs, biting at the pale line of his throat—a noise, strangled and sweet for his efforts—and he wonders what else he can dredge from that mouth, what things Bilbo might ask for. His desire is very real, but Bilbo rocks against it and pants in Thorin’s ear. His own presses into Thorin’s stomach, an impression of heat and damp.

If he doesn’t stay—but he must, Thorin thinks, because his line isn’t willing to part from their treasure so easily. Though his body is weary from the long days of warfare, it wants what is offered to it.

The pockmarks that had marked Bilbo’s lips are gone, reddened and reshaped by what they have done. Thorin inhales, but the stench of battle is drowned out by the clammy earthen scent of the mines below them. He runs his hand from the length of Bilbo’s spine down behind him, squeezing between his legs.

“Oh,” gasps Bilbo. “You—oh.” He grinds down against Thorin’s fingers.

“If I ask too much—” 

“Put your hand on me.”

Thorin pulls at the buttons of his trousers, impatient with their complications, their threading. But then he is inside and he takes Bilbo in hand, and if he is somewhat stilted and awkward, the hobbit is kind enough to stay his tongue. Bilbo shudders with his entire body, his hands planted on either side of Thorin’s head against the throne. He writhes on Thorin’s lap, sweat catching the stray fragments of light from the precious gold woven into the rock around them. “ _Please_ ,” he groans from somewhere deep. “You don’t ask enough.”

Thorin grits his teeth against all the things he might say. His is a foolish tongue, promising glory and riches to anyone with a willing heart. 

(His vision of the future has always been clouded and dark, as though made of indiscernible shades. It is at this moment that Thorin Oakenshield finds the drapery removed, light cast on his ambitions and dreams—and in them, his crown commands respect, his gold supplies for his people. But he sees also: warm living wood, a kitchen full of herbs, the greenery of the Shire and someone clawing him into bed as night falls gentle-like on their heads. The worn to threadbare cotton under his hands rides up, a robe he can unknot when blind.)

But this wraith, it remains hooded and meandering; it would be unwise to speak of it before he may study its details in solitude. Thorin cannot rend himself from the task before him, for he is a fixed star set on its course to the lowlands. He seeks: the love handles made thinner by travel, the curve of a belly, the rapid drumming of his heart. Under his hands, Bilbo’s breath hitches and he cries Thorin’s name in a way no other has.

“Just so,” Thorin says, hauling him closer and undulating against him. The stone beneath him grows warm from their friction, a throne reclaimed. “I would hear you,” he tells him. “I would have you stay by my side.”

Bilbo presses a fierce kiss into the corner of his mouth as if to stopper his words. He strokes the lines of Thorin’s brow—in something approaching tenderness, Thorin thinks—though his countenance is set in its ferocity. He struggles, and Thorin sees it clearly, the manner in which all beings wish to give an answer untainted with falsehoods.

In the end, he gives no lie or bargain; he says nothing at all. Thorin cages his frustration, his naked greed—he does not mistake his despair for fury, so hollow is its seat in his heart—and twists in his throne, upending Bilbo in his place. There is a scattering of limbs entangled, but he finds his way free of them. “It seems, on the contrary, Master Baggins, I have already asked too much.”

He puts Bilbo on his knees, braced against the back of the throne, and spits into his hand. In his visions, in all the idle thought Thorin may have indulged of this moment, he has always seen Bilbo’s face in their coupling. Yet he finds he cannot bear those dark eyes and the battle he has brought to Thorin’s door; like a coward, Thorin keeps it just beyond the threshold, torches rousing the night.

 

The Arkenstone casts light out across his arms, vibrant and cold. Bilbo finds himself mesmerized by it and the delicate impressions of carving in the throne’s granite backing: patterns with meanings, stories left to rot. He barely makes a sound as Thorin jerks his trousers down and pushes a slick, uncomfortably large finger inside, the pressure immense for only a moment before Bilbo’s body opens and gives way to him. He can’t remember the last time he allowed someone this intimacy. Perhaps one of the Tunnelly boys, a quick romp in the honeysuckle. He had been young, then, and too clever to be caught by the romances of other lads and lasses.

And now, he is here: his palm smearing half-dried blood across the throne’s arm, his legs spread for a king. This coupling burns. His love would not know what to do with a flower garden.

The clank of Thorin’s sword belt laid carelessly to the ground brings him away from the Shire. There is a rustling noise and then Thorin hitches his hips up, his breathing strained. Initially, Bilbo can feel him rutting between his thighs, the stiff head of Thorin’s cock sliding under his balls and against his own need. Bilbo closes his eyes and grips the arms of the throne until his knuckles milk out their color. _If you do come back,_ he thinks, _you’ll not be the same._

Then Thorin pushes inside and Bilbo wedges his head against the throne’s backing. He tries not to cry out; he does not succeed.

Thorin says something, but he cannot hear it above the roar between his ears, some instinctive drop in sound while Bilbo processes the fullness. He realizes he is not breathing. He makes himself take in air. Thorin’s beard scratches his back as he murmurs into Bilbo’s spine, his hands slowly dragging up and down his sides as if he is an animal to be calmed. The light from the Arkenstone—it is so much brighter and variegated than Bilbo had realized, enwrapping them both in its protection.

It’s the Arkenstone that makes Bilbo tremble and curse, as if he’s fighting against its pull as Thorin rocks against him in slow, rolling motions, until he can take more, until the burn eases. “Bilbo,” Thorin whispers against the nape of his neck, tracing his shoulder blades and then lower, lower, _lower_. Teeth scrape against his sun freckles. A tattered braid falls across Bilbo’s shoulder, and he urges himself back into Thorin’s bulk, craning his neck until Thorin’s shoulder cradles it. This—oh _this_ , that he could always have it.

This ache will unravel him, tendons and teeth and fingernails.

Thorin hooks an arm under one of Bilbo’s knees and raises it, propping it on the arm of the throne. His next drive is deep, more welcomed. Bilbo gasps, says _yes_ , clenches and tangles the braid until it is a mash of hair in between his knuckles. He can barely keep his balance, but Thorin will not let him fall, not this time nor anytime after. Rather, Thorin holds Bilbo in place as he takes his pleasure, and perhaps Bilbo would have believed the illusion of a king reveling in his spoils if not for his voice: desperate, reverent as prayer, a dwarf who knows not what to do with his gratification.

Bilbo is entirely certain that Thorin Oakenshield has no idea of what his voice reveals. It lights a fire in Bilbo; it stokes him until he’s panting and dripping with sweat and keening for _deeper_ , for _oh please, deeper_. It rends him in twenty pieces. His toes curl. He cannot keep his grasp on the throne.

And then there is the surge of Thorin’s weight against him, pinning him in place as he spends himself inside in short, uncontrolled jerks. His open mouth sinks down hot over the junction of where Bilbo’s neck slopes into his shoulder. Does he say Bilbo's name once more? Later, he will ask later.

When it is over, Thorin reaches around Bilbo to clasp his stomach, raking through sweat and seed. He finishes Bilbo whilst remaining in him, until it is Bilbo who scrambles against the throne and bellows, the new king’s name reverberating in the long drops around them.

 

“Come here,” says Bilbo, carding his fingers through Thorin’s mess of hair. He lays a crown of kisses across his forehead and connects them with an invisible line. He has a kindly smile and his eyes are dark, but only with drowsiness and secrets.

_That is a good omen_ , Thorin thinks. He sits on the floor in front of the throne, resting his chin on Bilbo’s knee. Perhaps he is smiling, too.

“That was quite good,” Bilbo muses.

“You will want your bed now.”

“Yes, I will. I think I’ve earned a very nice bed.” Bilbo furrows his brow and tugs at Thorin’s braid, which is in need of repair. “Not for—because of the battle, you understand, and my part in this whole adventure.”

Thorin laughs. “Whatever my burglar requests.”

There is a strangeness with which Bilbo considers him, a sort of thoughtful regard that makes Thorin both uneasy and fulfilled. “That is a problem,” he says softly, picking at the tie that binds Thorin’s braid. “You see, I’m afraid I will ask too much of you, as well. I’m not sure you have any use for me anymore. You’re King Under the Mountain.”

There are many things Thorin could say. Foolhardy things, built from the headrush of victory. Aloof proverbs passed down from his grandfather to him in this very chair. Gentle words for a gentle folk.

He takes Bilbo’s hand and hides a kiss in his palm, as dwarven children do to profess to their admirers: _yours are the most skillful, the most beautiful, the only I wish to hold in my long years_.

(The first arrow is let loose. He will wait for an answering cry in the dark, for a sky blotted with fire to put him out of his misery.)

**Author's Note:**

> Continued in [left the bones behind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/688151/chapters/1263455).


End file.
